Jan 1, 2008 · psu · 2 minute read
Food and Drink
Recently my pot stickers have been bothering me. It was a texture problem. The filling tasted right, but was not solid enough. Ideally the filling of each dumpling is an independent little meatball that just happens to be sitting inside the doughy skin. Mine were not like this, they were sandy and insubstantial. Clearly I had to ask my mom what was going on.
So when my parents visited over Christmas this year, we investigated my methods, going over each step of the process.
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Dec 31, 2007 · psu · 4 minute read
Culture
As is traditional at this time of year, our brain capacity has been severely limited by a all the blood rushing to our stomachs. I can’t really remember what I was doing a week ago, much less a year ago. Still, here are a few thoughts that I can manage to locate in the fog.
Pittsburgh Food Events of the Year The beginning of this year saw the sad loss of one of the iconic food locations in Pittsburgh.
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Dec 31, 2007 · peterb · 1 minute read
Culture
Y’know, I pretty much stay awake until 1 or 2 am every night of the year. Every single night. But something about the hype and circumstance surrounding New Years' Eve makes me want to go to sleep at 7:30.
Bah, humbug.
Dec 27, 2007 · psu · 7 minute read
Games
At my request, my co-writer and game pusher peterb used his Gamefly powers to obtain Assassin’s Creed for the Xbox 360 the other week. I’ve spent a couple of weeks playing it in between my long sessions of getting repeatedly shot in the head playing Call of Duty 4. To say that Assassin’s Creed is a mixed bag does not really do the game justice. After all, the game has far loftier goals than usual.
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Dec 26, 2007 · peterb · 2 minute read
Games
I’ve made no secret of my love for Bay 12 Games' Dwarf Fortress. I’ve returned to it this holiday season only to find there’s been a significant change: the game is now 3D.
It’s still a roguelike, mind you. But the environments now encompass a huge number of z-levels, which you can step through with the < and > keys.
I’m of two minds about this development. On the positive side, it brings a lot of freshness and variety to the game, and opens up a lot of interesting possibilities, particularly with respect to moving water and magma about.
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Dec 20, 2007 · peterb · 4 minute read
Games
Karl Hendricks, a Pittsburgh indie-rock local legend, released an EP in the early 90’s called I Hate This Party which perfectly encapsulated teen angst, the feeling of simply not understanding the things that other people like to do, and the shame that can sometime go along with it.
I hate this party. I hate all your friends. I hate feeling stupid. I always do in the end.
This, not to put too fine a point on it, is how I feel when people talk about what a superlatively awesome time they are having playing Popcap’s pachinko- on-crack game Peggle.
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Dec 17, 2007 · peterb · 1 minute read
Games
…and now I’ve picked up Disgaea 2 via eBay.
STOP ME BEFORE I BUY AGAIN.
Dec 13, 2007 · peterb · 1 minute read
Games
I visited The Exchange last night, and ended up walking out with two other Nippon Ichi games, La Pucelle Tactics and Rhapsody, A Musical Adventure.
I am so very doomed.
Dec 11, 2007 · peterb · 7 minute read
Games
My co-writer and I have somewhat different approaches towards games of questionable value. He approaches gaming a bit like a “catch and release” fisherman, constantly buying the newest games on a whim, playing them for a couple of days, and then selling them on eBay in a week if they don’t work out. I, on the other hand, agonize over each and every purchase, determined to hold on to my hard-earned cash to the last second.
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Dec 10, 2007 · psu · 7 minute read
Games
I have a peculiar, but probably not particularly unique, habit. I like to read reviews of things after I have otherwise consumed them. I do this a lot with movies, music, books and other such “artistic” media. I think part of this activity stems from the engineer/dork need to search out validation for one’s opinions. For example, I was once thrilled to find out that the Trader Joe’s red wine that I had bought was also enjoyed by the wine critic on The Splendid Table.
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Dec 6, 2007 · psu · 8 minute read
Games
I have always liked first person shooters. For a long time they were all I played. Every couple of years I’d pick up a new one and play it for a while and then go dormant again. Being slow and uncoordinated, I have never been particularly good at shooters. In online games I am particularly useless, and my main goal is usually to not be shut out.
After the last flood of major releases in 2004, the last few years have been off years for shooters.
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Dec 5, 2007 · peterb · 2 minute read
Games
I’m not going to link to any of the handwringing articles over this because I don’t want to bore my readers to death. For those of you who are already following the situation, here is my take:
(1) No one who is talking actually knows why Gerstmann is no longer working at Gamespot. (2) Everyone who is talking is speculating. (3) All of the various posts people are citing that ‘confirm’ the rumors, don’t.
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Dec 4, 2007 · psu · 3 minute read
Culture
I watch too much football these days. Aside from being one of the few things that makes HDTV actually worth the trouble, I am also blessed with being able to follow two teams that are playing at a high level: The Patriots and the Steelers. Which brings me to Monday Night Football.
My beloved Patriots came within a few feet of losing their first game last night. I have nothing really to say about that.
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Dec 3, 2007 · peterb · 3 minute read
Food and Drink
Every year I make some homemade eggnog, which always sounds disgusting but ends up being pretty good. I’ve made versions with both raw, pasteurized and cooked eggs, depending on to whom it will be served. The raw egg version does taste noticeably different from the pasterurized or cooked versions, and has a thinner and more pleasant texture, but does carry a higher health risk. Life, of course, is full of tradeoffs, and this is one of them.
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Nov 29, 2007 · peterb · 1 minute read
Web
Being something of a tea snob, I’ve always been fascinated by the over the counter supermarket tea market, where companies like Celestial Seasonings can sell exactly the same junk product as Lipton but, through the power of a nice box design and some flavor text, command a huge premium in price.
Today it struck me: this is how I will get rich. I will market low quality teas in fine packaging.
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Nov 28, 2007 · peterb · 3 minute read
Computers
…or “Good software is worth paying full price for.”
Around this time last year a package of products was marketed and sold to the Mac community under the name “MacHeist.” From a purely consumer-centric point of view, the package represented good value for money: a number of excellent apps for a bargain-basement price. What was a little bit irritating to me (and to others, such as John Gruber) was that the package was marketed as being half a celebration of indie mac development and half a charitable enterprise, when in reality the promoters raked in the mad cash for themselves, to the tune of (according to Gruber) around a half-million bucks.
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Nov 27, 2007 · peterb · 3 minute read
Food and Drink
My [experiments with homemade grenadine](http://tleaves.com/2007/11/13 /grenadine-grenade/) have paid off. First, let’s talk about how I did it, then let’s talk about what to do with it.
With this batch, I started with a fresh pomegranate, because I happened to have one. Having tasted it side by side with the POM brand juice, I feel confident in saying: there’s absolutely no difference, just use the bottled juice. It’s less work, and it will taste exactly the same.
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Nov 26, 2007 · psu · 1 minute read
Computers
Today I installed Leopard on my home laptop. As usual, installing a new version of the OS broke the Xemacs build I keep around for the one thing I do with Emacs. Normally I have the fortitude to get it working again, but not tonight. In a final step away from the brain damage of Emacs as a tool to use every day, I deleted the install and will not bring it back.
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Nov 21, 2007 · psu · 5 minute read
Games
I originally planned to pick up The Orange Box on the strength of the Team Fortress 2 trailer videos. Here was a multiplayer game with some character, I thought. I was excited about it. The people who play games for me played a lot of the beta and seemed to love it, but then they all ended up playing the multiplayer on Steam instead of the Xbox, and then my Xbox melted.
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Nov 20, 2007 · peterb · 5 minute read
Games
I don’t have a lot of time for games.
This may seem strange, given how much I write about them, but the fact is that I work a day job, and have a social life, and games basically fit a slim slice of time between the time I’m done with everything else – usually around 10:30 or 11 pm – and the time I go to bed.
That has some interesting consequences.
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Nov 15, 2007 · peterb · 4 minute read
Games
I recently played the first eleven missions of Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn for the Nintendo Wii.
This breaks something of a tradition for me. I recently played the first ten missions of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance on the Gamecube. Last year I played ten missions (each) of Fire Emblem and Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones on the Gameboy Advance. I abandoned all of those games after ten missions.
Why only ten missions?
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Nov 14, 2007 · psu · 4 minute read
Web
Spend any time on the Interwebs these days and you will inevitably end up reading one kind of forum or another. These days there seems to be one of these for every normal human interest and probably the interests that aren’t all that normal. I have two observations to make about these forums, one short and one long.
First, for some reason, they all use the same sort of shitty PHP forum software.
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Nov 13, 2007 · peterb · 3 minute read
Food and Drink
So I have been following, with a mixture of horror and admiration, a thread on a certain internet forum called Stomping Through the Savoy. The Savoy in question is [The Savoy Cocktail Book](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1862057 729?ie=UTF8&tag=theusualsuspepat&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creative ASIN=1862057729), a fascinating manual full of cocktails from the American Bar at the Savoy Hotel in London. The most interesting aspect of these drinks is that they are all, without exception, utterly undrinkable garbage.
OK, OK, I am exaggerating.
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Nov 12, 2007 · psu · 4 minute read
Food and Drink
After better than ten years of [happily avoiding the home espresso problem](http://tleaves.com/2004/03/17/why-i-dont-buy-a-silvia-or-ode-to-la- prima/) I finally gave in last week and bought a fancy home espresso maker. Unsurprisingly, I did not go into this with a great deal of enthusiasm, and I have to say that I am surprised at the general quality of the shots that the new device is providing even at my relatively novice level of practice. As usual, many lessons were learned in the process.
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Nov 9, 2007 · peterb · 1 minute read
Games
TellTale has released the demo for the first game in Season 2 of their Sam and Max adventure games: Ice Station Santa. A full review will be forthcoming, but let me just say this: if you own a PC that you play games on you must buy Sam and Max. It is more than just a good idea. It is a moral imperative.
Nov 8, 2007 · peterb · 1 minute read
Food and Drink
Finally, one of the videos we’ve been planning for a while is put to bed. Please enjoy our demonstration of why martini glasses are stupid (video after the break).
As always, higher-quality versions of the video can be found here at .mac. I showed this to bbum and his first entirely correct comment was “You didn’t break the glass!” I actually had that in the script, but due to the location that proved infeasible.
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Nov 7, 2007 · psu · 4 minute read
Games
Tonight we begin with a couple of different links. First, I have to give a shout out to Yahtzee, that writer of flash-based animated video game reviews who brings a heretofore almost unheard of level of bitterness to the game. The target of his ire this week is close to my heart since he takes [Zelda](http:/ /www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/2608-Zero- Punctuation-Zelda-Phantom-Hourglass) and literally skewers the game headfirst on a pike.
As Mr. Yahtzee says, if any other developer (except perhaps Valve) spent their days repackaging their “IP” the way Nintendo does they’d be taken to task by an almost uncountable number of interweb forum dorks for being no better for “the industry” than that decrepit punch toy of the gaming forum bully: EA.
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Nov 6, 2007 · peterb · 1 minute read
Web
The problem with having (and writing about) diverse interests is that it’s too easy to get behind the 8-ball and build up a pile of article concepts but not actually have the time to execute them. This is where I find myself today. To buy myself time, let me share what I’m currently planning on getting written and/or filmed this month.
Why I Hate Martini Glasses (video) Why You Should Make Your Own Goddamned Maraschino Cherries Instead Of Eating Those Disgusting Things Comma You idiot My Manhattan (video) Liquor Producers Who Make Bottles Bigger Than My Shelf Should Be Beaten With Sticks Bloody Mary Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn review, a.
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Nov 2, 2007 · peterb · 1 minute read
Photo
…And on the other side of the block is one of the better Halloween displays, complete with tombstone lit in that particular [color that cannot be captured](http://www.friday.com/bbum/2007/10/21/the-color-that-cannot-be- captured/).
[](http://wptest.tleaves.com/wp- content/uploads/2007/11/20071031-10106.jpg)
Nov 1, 2007 · peterb · 1 minute read
Photo
Everything you need to know about America’s relationship with its food, its children, its culture, and itself is encapsulated in this photo, taken on Halloween night.
[](http://wptest.tleaves.com/wp- content/uploads/2007/11/20071031-10110-3.jpg)
Oct 30, 2007 · peterb · 2 minute read
Computers
I bought a new disk drive to use with my shiny new iMac, specifically for use with Time Machine. Picking out the right drive to buy was itself educational.
There’s a tendency in geek circles to succumb to what I call measurebation, which more or less means to compare products solely by their feature lists. You pick the product at your price point that has bigger numbers on it, and you’re done.
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Oct 29, 2007 · psu · 1 minute read
Culture
The Steelers beat up the Bengals.
The Patriots completely crushed the Redskins.
Finally, the Red Sox finished off the Rockies to win the World Series again. Who would have thought.
Oct 26, 2007 · psu · 1 minute read
Culture
I was trying to record the new PBS series The War in HD on my shiny new HD Tivo. The first few episodes came in fine, but the most recent repeat only recorded in SD even though the program guide said it was on the HD version of WQED. So I tried setting up a single recording by hand, and after it finished, I looked at it and it was a completely different program than was listed in the Guide.
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Oct 24, 2007 · psu · 5 minute read
Places
We were in Seattle for a long weekend this past week. This is the first time I’ve been back since a trip about ten years ago. As before, Seattle is a great food town, especially for seafood. And, in the last ten years they have finally learned how to make a cappuccino. Here are a few places to try.
Coffee First things first. Seattle has this reputation for bringing “good coffee” to the rest of us barbarians in the rest of the country.
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Oct 23, 2007 · peterb · 3 minute read
Food and Drink
I’ve been wanting to do this recipe as a video blog, but due to an uncharacteristic bout of responsibility, I sent Sony back their loaner HD camcorder and I just haven’t been able to work up the enthusiasm to use my somewhat dilapidated Canon. So this is a story I will have to tell in words.
Earlier this spring, in my article Rehabilitating Vermouth I extolled the virtues of vermouth, particularly sweet vermouth.
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Oct 22, 2007 · peterb · 2 minute read
Racing
The American conception of Italian masculinity is somewhat out of step with reality. 30 years of Italian-American gangster movies have firmly ensconced the idea of Italian men as sort of irrationally hyper-macho. The truth is a little more prosaic. Any native Italian woman will tell you: Italian men are mama’s boys.
I say this without rancor or intent to insult. It’s not inherently negative, it’s just the simple truth, to the point where the Italian government offers tax breaks to men to move out of their mothers' houses already.
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Oct 19, 2007 · psu · 3 minute read
Games
You will recall that [last week](http://tleaves.com/2007/10/10/raging-red- ring-reaction-rant/) my wife and I called Microsoft to get a shipping box for my dead Xbox. That converstation lasted 45 minutes and included no less than six corrections to the shipping address as read back by the woman on the other side of the phone who apparently did not really speak english at all.
Well, the box arrived that the beginning of this week. The only problem: it arrived at the wrong address.
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Oct 16, 2007 · peterb · 4 minute read
Culture
My hands are still a bit chopped up from this weekend, and I’m still in a bit of pain, so pardon me in advance as I prepare to overstate my case.
When I moved into my house, one of the things I liked about it was the cute little brick walk leading up to the front porch. It’s a bunch of concave bricks tiled next to each other, with no mortar or anything holding them in place.
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Oct 15, 2007 · psu · 6 minute read
Computers
I’ve used many keyboards in my time on this Earth. I think the very first one I used was attached to an old manual typewriter that I used to use to type up certain homework assignments in junior high. The first one that I used that was connected to a computer was the collection of square calculator keys that Commodore called a keyboard on the PET 2001. After that, there were the TRS- 80s, the Apple II, the VT-100 in the high school, the Adm-3a, Tektronix, and some horrific unified APL terminals at Umass, and who can forget the Concept 100s at CMU.
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Oct 11, 2007 · peterb · 6 minute read
Web
The two Petes collaborated on this article. If you can guess who it is written in the style of, you win nothing, but may feel either proud or ashamed, at your discretion.
It was in a karaoke bar in Saitama that I first met Kobayashi Hikaru-san. This was not your high-end bar, like you’d find in Shibuya, or Harajuku, or any of the other hip spots. This was a thoroughly middle-class establishment.
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Oct 10, 2007 · psu · 4 minute read
Games
As we hinted at yesterday my Xbox 360 melted over the weekend. I had happily worked through the single player of Halo 3 and was playing the occasional multiplayer match when the box started crashing randomly. Then it booted to the red lights. Then it recovered for a day. Then it booted to the red lights again.
After that, the worst part of the experience came: I called Microsoft. Don’t let this happen to you.
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Oct 9, 2007 · peterb · 5 minute read
Games
Early on Saturday psu let me know that his Xbox 360 had given up the ghost. He had been hoping to get the Red Rings of Death at least since mine died a few months ago, and they sent me back a cooler, quieter model. Still, he was a bit nonplussed, and at a loss as to what to do without his beloved Halo 3. “Maybe I’ll play Banjo- Kazooie,” he joked.
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Oct 8, 2007 · psu · 7 minute read
Culture
Here’s what you used to do to buy a TV. You would go to Sears, look at the TVs, pick one that seemed to be the right size, take it home, plug it into the cable or antenna, and turn it on.
Because the consumer electronics industry has your interest and convenience as its highest priority, today I can write a 1500 word essay on how to buy a TV in the modern world.
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Oct 3, 2007 · psu · 5 minute read
Culture
I finally couldn’t take watching HD sports over the air, so I dropped some cash on the new Tivo HD. If you weren’t paying attention, this is the $300 box that does most of what the previously $800 and now $600 Tivo Series 3 does. You can get dual HD tuning, a disk big enough for all the programming I’ll ever need, and that same stylish and streamlined Tivo interface.
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Oct 1, 2007 · psu · 4 minute read
Games
I finished the single player campaign in Halo 3 this weekend. There is almost no point in writing anything about the experience because the game has taken on a life separate from normal critical evaluation. There is really only one thing you need to know about Halo 3 and it is this: Halo 3 is Halo, only bigger.
I was going to deploy the standard Spinal Tap reference at this point, but I’ve [already used that line this year](http://tleaves.
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Sep 25, 2007 · peterb · 5 minute read
Games
It is a disturbing and compelling image. The young man is wearing his school uniform and a slim pair of headphones. He reaches into a pocket with his right hand and pulls out a gun. He flourishes, twirls the gun, and points it at his own temple. There’s a sharp report as he fires, and a fountain of glittering shards spray out of the other side of his head.
, and it’s an SLO. Does anyone from a more civilized state want to help me obtain a wider variety to sample?
Sep 20, 2007 · psu · 5 minute read
Culture
I was walking around in my local Borders a couple of months ago just after they rearranged the Music and DVD section. My eyes scanned through the shelves of DVDs, and I realized something that was at once horrible and amazing. There, on the shelves, was most of the history of broadcast television archived in little boxes of silver disks. You could get anything, almost no show was too obscure or too low quality to miss the cut.
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Sep 19, 2007 · peterb · 2 minute read
Food and Drink
Today I met my friend Kilolo at the newly-opened “Oh Yeah Ice Cream & Coffee,” on Highland Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Shadyside neighborhood. While perusing their offerings, I noticed they had something they claimed was “Guinness Ice Cream (Adults Only)”. Skeptical as I always am, I asked for a taste.
And it was good.
I didn’t have a camera. I didn’t have a mic. But I had my MacBook Pro, with its built-in iSight camera.
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